The story of Mitch Mustain and how his career fell apart is something of a legend in Arkansas.
Mustain was a high school star and reached celebrity status at Springdale High in Arkansas as part of the famed “Springdale Five.” But despite starting at Arkansas, Mustain and high school teammate Damian Williams ended up transferring to USC. Mustain went from National Player of the Year in high school to crashing and burning in college; he ended up a backup at USC.
Houston Nutt, who was the coach at Arkansas and recruited Mustain and Williams, recently talked about how it all went wrong with the quarterback during an interview with Gio and Jones on CBS Sports Radio.
“In my 31 years of coaching, that was the worst scenario ever,” Nutt told the hosts. “(Mustain) came out of Springdale, he’s a 5-star Parade this, Parade that, and Casey Dick, my starting quarterback was hurt at the time. So he played and played in the first six or seven games, and of course don’t forget the supporting cast was pretty good: Darren McFadden, Felix Jones, Peyton Hillis, Marcus Monk. So we didn’t ask him to do much. But once Casey Dick was ready, we put him back in. That’s where everything went crazy.
“It’s a tough situation when you have parents, you got a lot of people there in the community, that have this notion that this guy should be a Heisman Trophy candidate as a freshman and he should be doing this, he should be doing that,” Nutt continued. “They filter this guy through all this noise when he should just be a freshman and just take one day at a time, go to school, go to college and be a part of a team. It’s not about you; it’s about a team. And it’s hard. It wasn’t navigated very good. My boss got let go. Frank Broyles, longtime icon here, they move him out. So I said, ‘You know, maybe it’s time for me to go.’ I was there 10 years and that’s when I went to Ole Miss. But it’s a shame. It’s a shame. I think it’s a sad, sad story, and a lot of it is ridiculous.”
Mustain threw 10 touchdowns and nine interceptions in his first season at Arkansas in 2006 before transferring. He only threw another 89 passes in the rest of his college career at USC.
When all said and done, it turns out the real star of the “Springdale Five” was actually head coach Gus Malzahn, not his players. Mustain’s failures seem to vindicate Nutt.
